Massive Rise in Prison Population May Have Serious Consequences

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia — More people are now imprisoned in
the United States than ever before — a trend that may have
damaging consequences both for prisoners and for the nation as a
whole, experts said Saturday (Feb. 18) here at the annual meeting
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1980, there were fewer than 2 million people
in prison, in jail (awaiting trial or convicted of minor
crimes), on parole or on probation in the United States. By 2010,
that number had swelled to over 7 million people.

Currently, the roughly 2.4 million people in prison or on parole
account for about 1 percent of the U.S. voting age population,
while 2.4 percent of adults are
ex-prisoners (about 8.1 million people in 2010), said
University of Minnesotasociologist Christopher Uggen.

The same number of people — 700,000 — are released from prison
every year as the number of men who graduate from college with
bachelor's degrees every year, something that suggests "the rise
of the penal state has broad social implications," said
sociologist Michael Massogliaof Pennsylvania State University.
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Racial differences

While the percentage of the
population in prison has remained relatively static in some
countries, such as Japan, "the U.S. has proceeded to make a
series of choices that has resulted in the situation described
today," Uggen said.

About 3.1 percent of the adult African-American population is in
prison or on parole, and 7.4 percent of African-American adults
are ex-prisoners.

"Incarnation has not only grown dramatically, but it's
disproportionally concentrated among certain subgroups of the
population," said sociologist Becky Pettitof the University of
Washington in Seattle. "Criminal justice contact has become
normative among some sociodemographic groups, particularly among
low-educated African-American men. Incarnation has become a
repository for the most disadvantaged segments of the
population."

Consequences narrow and broad

Research shows that the
status of ex-criminal makes it harder to find a job, to
support a family, to vote and even to stay healthy. They are
often restricted from living in certain types of public housing,
and from working in certain types of jobs.

"The choices that ex-inmates have are limited," Massogliasaid.
"We know that ex-inmates have fewer financial resources and
social ties."

And the effects aren't just felt on the individual level, but on
society as a whole, the scientists said.

For example, many studies, such as the widely used Current
Population Survey carried out by the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics and the Census Bureau, count only people living in
households, and exclude people living in jail. These studies
sometimes lead to overly optimistic assessments of racial
progress, Pettit said.

"Using data from the Current Population Survey between 1980 and
2008, you see a decline in the racial gap in
high-school dropout rates," Pettit said."But if you include
inmates, what you see is no improvement in racial inequality in
the high-school dropout rates since 1991."

Election results

The same problem affected widely touted estimates of voter
turnout in the last presidential election.

"After the 2008 election, more than one headline indicated there
was incredibly high
voter turnout rates among young African-American men," Pettit
said. "If we adjust for the number of people incarnated, the
voter turnout was exactly the same as in the 1980 Reagan-Carter
election."

And because many states deny people who have been convicted of a
felony the right to vote, either temporarily or permanently,
about 5.3 million Americans are disenfranchised.

This disparity has led to different outcomes in at least two
presidential elections — the 2000 Bush vs. Gore fight and the
1960 election of John F. Kennedy over Richard Nixon — which
studies suggest would have been different if those ex-cons had
been able to vote, Massogliasaid.

Ultimately, the experts said that mandatory minimum sentencing,
especially for drug crimes, as well as the length of probation
periods, could be reevaluated to reduce the huge prison
population.

"Incarceration is a very inefficient and blunt tool to restrict
crime," Uggen said. "We're incarnating many people who are no
longer dangerous. It's much more about retribution
and punishment than rational policy."

However, the recent recession may be causing some lawmakers to
reevaluate prison policy in light of the fact that it can cost
about $140,000 a year to keep just one inmate in prison, he
added.

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